i used to have one of those!

I played with this for hours. I remember that the little people that came with it were square shaped, not round like fisher price little people.

I had one of these and remember how much fun it was to pretend to go to McDonalds since we rarely went when I was a kid in the 1970's.

The first McDonald's restaurant kit (1968) was Life-Like Buildems, HO scale. Minimal gluing was needed, and the interior detail was so close to reality. Sold originally for about $3, today goes for $100 or more, unassembled and parts sealed in bag with box. This kit was for kids over eight years old. In the early 1990s, a German toy company, Vollmer, exported a complex restaurant kit with hundreds of parts. Instruction sheet was also little help, with few words, mostly pictures. This kit was strictly for those over 13. Vollmer sold both McDonald's and Burger King kits, retailing for about $45.

An antique mall near Appleton has one of the elusive Life-Like McDonald hamburger stand kits selling for $245. Parts and decals still factory sealed. I learned from one source that a dispute over licensing rights caused such a low output of these HO-scale kits, making them a rarity. Around 100,000 were made in 1968. They were selling so quickly that McDonald's demanded a bigger cut from profits (higher licensing fee), and the greedy Kroc family put the kibosh on the deal after Life-Like refused. The store also had a 1975 KFC stand kit, also from Life-Like, selling only for $40. A few million of these were made, as a more amiable agreement existed between Life-Like and the Col. Sanders clan.